How to build your Music Business

Welcome back to my channel. In this video, I'm going to talk about how to build your music business. For those of you that don't know me, I'm Sides, aka Sabrina, and I graduated Berkeley in 2012. When I graduated, I had no idea how I was going to make money doing music. It took me 10 years of failures, rejection, disappointments, running to gigs, feeling sorry for myself, to finally, finally figure it out. Last year was my first ever year feeling successful. If you're the type of person that defines success by how much money you make, last year I made over $200k in the music industry. And today I'm going to tell you my best strategies. I'm going to tell you what worked for me so you can apply them to your music business. My goal is for you to take what I've learned and what has worked for me to apply them to you and your goals and your business. If I can help just one of you succeed, that would make me so happy. So let's jump right into it. The first step you've got to ask yourself is, what do you want to do? Now, this might seem really easy, but it's actually kind of hard and might take some soul searching. You might think, oh my god, I just want to be a guitar player that goes on tour with a band. And then that'll happen. And then you'll realize, no, no, no, I hate tour life. I hate running around. This isn't for me. This isn't exactly what I want to do. So then you have to reassess. For me, I thought, once I start producing music, I want to produce for independent artists. I got my first artist, and I did not like that experience. And I had to revamp and decide what it is that I want to do. Many of you will want to do lots of things, right? You want to go on tour, and you'll want to mix and master for clients, and you want to open up a music studio, and you want to maybe open up a music store. So many things that you want to do. My recommendation is, think of it like steps. Get to one step, and then you can get to the next step, and then you can get to the next step. Don't try to do all these giant, giant goals all at once. Set goals for yourself. Remember, you are your own boss now, and unless you have money or connections, nobody's going to hand you anything. So what I like to do is pick goals for myself. So I like to think of it as squares. So we have our short-term goals in our smaller square, and then we have our long-term goals in our larger square. So for an example, depending on where your starting point is, a short-term goal can be, I want to get to a million plays on Spotify. And a long-term goal could be, I want to win a Grammy, right? So now we have to get to the steps and the individual goals that are going to get you to the final destination. Two, write down your goals in a place that you can visually see them. I'm a really big believer in vision boards and manifestation, and I am also a very goal-oriented person. If you ever go into a corporate company or corporate sales, they have the goals written everywhere. So I think it works for me, and hopefully that'll work for you. Three, this is a big one. Celebrate your goals when you achieve them. Take a beat, step back, pat yourself on the back. You did that. Then you can make new goals and keep going on. The cycle continues. My biggest tip is when you're picking your short-term goals, make sure they're attainable. Don't make your first goal so crazy unattainable, like I want to wake up tomorrow with a million followers. Focus on smaller goals. Okay, I want to get to 5,000 followers in six months. Then I want to get to 10,000 followers. You don't have to kill yourself. Now we're going to talk about business management. I'm going to break these down into individual points. We're going to go over becoming official, branding, setting rates, negotiating tips, sales tips, and taxes. Please keep in mind I am not a tax specialist or a financial advisor. These are just things that I've learned along the way that have helped me, and hopefully some of these will help you. I've learned all of these as I go. I didn't get a degree in any of these, and I will continue my education as my business grows. Becoming official. Let's talk about it. So set up an email. I like to use my free Gmail account. I still use the free Gmail account. Websites. You really only need a website if you are selling something, but it is kind of good to have. Link in bio. You want your link in bio, you can use something like Linktree. I'll talk about what I use later. Mailing list. Start collecting emails as soon as you can. Emails are great because they don't go away. You might get a big push on one of your social media accounts, but you won't keep in contact with them because you don't have their email address. So emails are a really great way to keep in contact. I kind of dropped the ball with this, and I've only recently started collecting emails, but you should collect them right away. Some ways that you can collect emails are by giving away free stuff. Here's free sample pack, here's free this, here's free that, and that's a cool way to collect emails. Or if you have a show, just start collecting emails there. Emails are gold. Virtual business cards for in real life meetings. So business cards, paper business cards, are a thing of the past. If you give someone a business card, there's a 99% chance it's just going to end up in the trash. Virtual business card, you can scan mine to check mine out. This one is free. There's a bunch of free ones, there's a bunch of paid ones, depending on how fancy you want to get with it. But it has all my social media links, a way for you to add the contact directly to your phone, and it's a really great way to keep in touch. Branding. Let's talk about branding. Everyone has a brand even if you don't know it. The way you dress, the way you act, the way you talk, that is all part of your brand. My brand is to help music creators achieve success, and also to make music production more accessible to more people. When you're working with your brand, you want to stay consistent. So you can pick a few colors and you kind of want to stick with it. When you have a profile picture on each of your platforms, you kind of want to stick with that. I have the same little icon of my face on every single platform. I'm not planning on changing it because that's how people recognize me. Typically less is more. You don't need a hundred colors or a hundred things. You want to just pick a few and kind of use them throughout. My brand is very girly. I like to keep it girly because I think it's like fun and approachable for girly stuff. I don't want music production or what I'm talking about to seem very serious. I like to keep it light and playful. And honestly, you guys do not have to overthink this. If you are in your video every single time and you're using the same text every single time and you wear the same kind of clothes every single time, that branding is going to carry over and it's going to be very clear and concise. Let's talk about how I set my prices. I get this question a lot. What to charge? How much to charge? How do you know the price is right? These are my steps and these are in no particular order. This is just kind of how I go about it. First thing you can try to do is ask around. Find people that are doing similar things than you and also make friends with them because it can come in handy. It can really come in handy. For instance, if I'm working with another music tech company and create contact with them, I can ask around friends that have also worked with them. Hey, how much did you charge them? What was it like working with them, etc, etc. I'll talk about this more in negotiating, but I always like to ask for the budget first. So a lot of people are giving me the same kind of rate for the same kind of stuff. I know, okay, that's kind of what works. Let's say most of my clients are offering me $400 to send them vocals. A new client comes around and they say, no, no, no, my budget is $100. But all these other clients offered you $400. Now, you know, okay, my rate is at least $400, right? So that's kind of another way that you can kind of gauge your prices. Decide what is worth your time. Like if making vocal sample packs are taking me hours and hours and hours and hours, and I'm only getting paid $700, maybe that's not worth it. Maybe I need to say, no, no, no, I'm getting paid $25 an hour. You don't have to tell this to the client, but you need to break it down. I want to make $25 an hour. I think this package is going to take me X amount of time. So I need to charge this much in order to make my hourly rate. You can experiment, right? Try things out. Sometimes I try selling my courses for a little bit higher, a little bit less. I run sales and you can kind of see where the sweet spot is. Okay. A lot of people are buying at this rate, or a lot of people are signing up at this rate. And that's kind of like the sweet spot. And lastly, decide what you feel comfortable charging. Not everything is about money. Okay. I know money is a metric of success, but you have to do what makes you feel good at the end of the day. So many times people are like, Sabrina, you should charge more for your courses. You can do like a high budget mentorship program. I don't want to do that because it doesn't go back to my goals and my thesis of my business, which is to make music production and building your business more accessible to people. So if I'm just charging $2,000 for a couple of clients or however much for a couple of clients, I cannot offer this for more people. Me personally, I'd rather sell more for less amount than a few for more, but it really just depends on what you want to do. Maybe you do only want to focus on those high budget things and you can figure it out from there. And then if you do that, maybe you don't want to just do the low ball things because even though you can make more money, it's not always about the money. Keep that in mind. Sales. Let's talk about sales. Fun fact about me when I was living in New York city and I was singing gigs on the weekend, I needed another job. I worked at Equinox selling gym memberships. For those of you that don't know, Equinox is a bougie gym. That's like $300 a month, something insane. I had to sell them each month and I reached double bonus every single month. So I have a sales background. Step one. Step one is to find the pain point. Think about your own struggles. Ask questions. Listen for why do they need me? Ask questions and pay attention. I'll give you a non-musical example. First, someone walks into the gym. Someone walks into the gym. I have to ask questions to figure out why they're there. Let's say I get to the why. The why is they don't have motivation to work out. They know it's good for them. They know they feel good when they do it, but they just can't get to do it. So the gym is $300. I say, sign up. You'll be motivated. Yada, yada, yada. No, no, no, this is too expensive. Now you counter them. Did you know that you can work out for free? What? You can go outside. You can run, do body weights. You can work out for free. And then I look them in the eye and I say, are you going to do it? But you will do it if you're paying $300 a month, won't you? So in the end, the $300 a month is going to be worth it for you because you're going to feel good. You're going to have that motivation that you've been dying for. Now is the time. So now you offer the solutions. That was step two. You sold the dream. Step three, create urgency. I'm going to go home. I'm going to think about it. I totally understand you want to go home and think about it, but the sale ends tomorrow. So if you want to lock in this $300 a month rate, you have to sign up now because if you wait, it's going to be $350 a month. And then a lot of times you get them. Let's do a musical example. You're a mix and master engineer, but a producer knows how to mix and master it themselves. They're still reaching out to you. Find the pain point. Why are you looking for me to mix and master for you? Even though you can mix and master yourself. What's the pain point? Okay. You get to the pain point. They just want to spend time creating. They don't have that extra time to mix and master. And they're having so many projects right now that I just want to send it off to somebody. So now you know the pain point. You're going to save them time. Then you offer them the solution. I can save you the time. Then they give you a pushback. I can't afford this rate of $250. Can you lower it? Now you're going to sell the dream. Remember the pain point is time. So you're going to push for the time. If you find somebody else that mixes and masters for you, but they're not as good as you are, you're going to spend so much time sending them revisions, sending them edits, that in the end, it would have been better for you to spend the extra $100 with me, who's a professional at this, who knows your taste, who knows you're going to get a good job. So that is why you should work with me. Okay. Let me think about it. Totally understand that you want to think about it. I don't want to pressure you at all. I do just want to let you know that my bookings are filling up and I only have, I'm only taking on one more client at this rate. Um, if you do want to think about it, let me know, but my rates are constantly changing. So you might miss out on this. So now you've created urgency, find the pain point, offer the solution. Okay. Step four is to follow up. You must keep in touch with people that you've worked with. Something that I like to do is every new year. I send an email out to everyone I've worked with happy new years. Thank you so much for working with me this year. I'd love to connect next year and work on some more projects. Please keep me in mind. A lot of times after I do that, I get a lot more jobs again. I'm checking with people that don't buy. Hey, congratulations on your new song release. I really loved what you did with the track, especially this like this. Please keep me in mind for any new music coming out. I'd still love to work together. Something like that. Anytime you have a meeting with someone always follow up. Thank you so much for meeting with me. I really enjoyed you and your goals. I'd love to work together. Please let me know if you have any other questions, just keep them in These are general sales tips. Lead with confidence. Remember they need you more than you need them. You are the only person that's going to offer the thing that they don't have. You have to think that you have to believe that and if they're not going to buy someone else is going to buy. So you don't need them. Don't be too pushy. Let them decide. Instead of saying yes or no, try to think of a different option. Would you like me to mix one song for you or would you like me to mix four songs for you? I can mix you one song for a hundred dollars. I can mix four songs for you for 350. You're giving them options. Focus on the relationship. This is a small industry. You don't want people talking about you or having a bad taste in your mouth. So focus, focus, focus on the relationship. Don't take it personally if they don't want to work with you. It's okay if they don't want to work with you. You never know what stage they're at. You don't have to take it personally. Always keep your eye out for more clients. Don't get comfortable. We'll talk about this later. Also maybe try some referral programs. Anytime someone refers someone to me like a one-on-one or something like that, I try to give them some sort of kickback or some sort of discount just because I want to show my appreciation. And lastly, this one is really important. Always use empathy. Empathy goes a long way. If they give you a pushback or something, I can't do it because xyz. I totally get it. I've been where you are too. I know your situation. Just want to let you know this is what I have to do. This is what I can do for you. Would you like to do this or this? You just have to talk to them like a human. I feel like so many salespeople don't talk to people like humans and that's when it gets tacky. Negotiating. I'm going to talk about my negotiating tactics. This is what's worked for me. None of this stuff I'm talking about at all in this whole class is the bible or things that you must do. Keep that in mind. If something else works better for you, keep doing that. But this is what has worked for me. Five tips. One, ask them their budget. This is controversial. Some people say if you tell them what you want, you end up making more money. But there's been times where I asked them their budget first and then they offer me a rate that was five times higher than what I normally charge. So if I just told them $1,000, I would have missed out on the $5,000 they were going to offer me for the same project. I like to gauge where they're at first. Confidently tell them your rates. Confidently. You don't have to explain why the rates are what they are. If you would like to educate your client, you can, but you do not have to. Three, respond to pushback. This is where the sales techniques are going to come in that I mentioned in the other one. I totally understand that you're working with a budget of $500. If you really want to work with this client, you can say, are you able to meet me in the middle? And then the next one we can reevaluate. Or you can say, can you meet me a little bit closer to my rate? If they're offering you gear, you can say, I'll do it for this rate. If you throw in this other gear or this other thing, gauge what you want to do. So because this is not just straightforward sales and it is a relationship business, you kind of have to really decide because a lot of these things could be a passion project, right? But you still want to get paid. That's where the negotiation kind of comes in. And that's where you play into it. If you really want to do the project, even if they offer you just like 50 bucks more than what they originally said, if it's 50 bucks closer to your rate, I've taken those because it might be something that I believe in or a company I believe in or a project I believe in. That's why it's like that. A lot of people say, oh, you should never split in the middle, blah, blah, blah. It's kind of like a different industry. This isn't a transactional industry. If they're still like back and forth, you can go to the pain points, ask the questions for the pain points, find out the why, and then offer the solution. Okay. Four, another thing you can do is offer packages. Let's say they really want to spend $500, figure out a way that you can offer multiple things at that $500 rate. You can do the math for what you're trying to sell. And this is the most important tip with negotiating. You must be willing to walk away. So you say, I totally understand this is out of your budget. I would love to work with you. If anything changes, please let me know. And so many times I will say this and people will come back and they'll come exactly to my budget. Let's say I'm really busy right now. I'm really only going to take the job if they do exactly my rate. And then a couple of days go by, they send me an email. Yeah, we're going to do it. We're going to do what you asked. I only got what I asked for because I walked away. It doesn't work all the time. Sometimes I've lost clients and that's okay because other clients are going to be around and you have to trust the universe. You cannot be afraid that the work won't come to you. You have to be confident that the work will come to you. Let's talk about how to get jobs, fans, clients. So this industry is not as straightforward as most industries I'll say. There's not a clear path and a clear system to find work, but here are some things that have worked for me and I'm going to talk about all of these. All right, let's talk about job boards. This is my least favorite way to get work in the music industry. They have worked for me, but I don't like doing this. Why? I hate interviewing. I hate applying. It's a waste of time, but these are the ones that have worked for me. So Playbill.com, when I was trying to sing more, is actually how I got my first cruise ship gig. I saw a job notice there for an agent, applied for the agent, and then he got me a job singing on the ship. Soundbetter. Soundbetter is where I was finding other producers that needed top lines or vocals. I only did a few jobs on Soundbetter. I don't love Soundbetter because they kind of take a big cut. LinkedIn, you can connect with people on LinkedIn. You can post things on Fiverr, Upwork, Thumbtack. If you're looking for mixing clients or production clients, you can try that. And Craigslist. I mean, I think it depends where you live, but when I was living in New York City, I got a lot of band work from Craigslist and I was able to network with a lot of people via Craigslist. Let's talk about outreach tips. Outreach and spamming does work. Again, I don't love doing it, but it does work if you do it correctly. Correctly is the key term. I like to think of it like a Sims game. You shouldn't ask or sell anything until you get to a certain level. Build a relationship first. Something that has recently worked on me is somebody sent me a message. I saw that you're learning guitar. I built a guitar course. I would love to send it to you. Oh, wow. Thank you so much. So they led with value, which is tip number three. Built the relationship. I knew that they were following me. They led with value. They're going to offer me their course that they charge for free to help me learn guitar. And then they asked, hey, would you like to jump onto my podcast? Always looking for people. So that was the ask. They need guests on their podcast. That's my time that I'd be giving for free in exchange for this guitar course. Or I could have ignored it. I thought that was a really great way to reach out. I typically follow people back that show up to my lives or are always sharing my songs because I want to connect with my true fans if I can help them in some way. And then it's interesting when fans become friends and then you can work on stuff with each other. So you really kind of want to build these relationships. Think about what spam has worked for you. What spam doesn't work is collab, bro, or share my beat or will you listen to my song? These are the things that don't work. Let's say you're a music producer and you are looking for singers, songwriters to produce for. You can go onto their pages. You can watch their content. And if they make great songs that you like, comment on it. Wow, this one's really beautiful. Duet or stitch their video. This is what it would sound like if I would produce your song. Send them a message. I'm a big fan of your music. I especially like this song in the chorus section. Wait for them to respond. And then you say, here's some of my production work. I think we'd be a great match together. I really believe I can take your songs to the next level. Let me know if you're ever interested. No pressure or something like that. So now you kind of did outreach in a more authentic way. If they were like, oh no, I'm sorry. I'm not interested to produce right now. I work with the same guy. You could say, totally understand. If you ever have any friends that you think would work well with me, please send my information along. That's kind of a great way to kind of like connect them. Let's talk about networking. This industry, as I mentioned before, is relationship-based. Sometimes it's more valuable to be a fun person than to be the most skilled person. For example, when I was working in New York City and we would need a new player in the band, let's say it's a guitar player, we would want a fun hang, right? We want obviously somebody that can play the guitar, but we would rather have somebody that was cool, fun to hang out with, that maybe wasn't as good as the diva guitar player or the grumpy guitar player or the guitar player that would always show up hostile. Even though they're a much better player, we would rather go with the fun guy. So people want to work with people that they like. So the best way to get a true connection is in real life or on a virtual event or something like that. So if you ever get those opportunities, take them. Take them. There's so many times that I host classes or networking events and stuff like that, so definitely take those opportunities whenever you can. Let's talk about social media. This is by far my favorite way to get work. Why? Because, as I mentioned before, I hate interviewing, I hate auditioning, I hate applications, and I was wondering how do I get the client, the job, to come to me. Hey Serena, would you like to do this job? Yes or no? I want these in my inbox. I'm able to do that from social media. I get all of my work from social media, from singing packs, getting set free gear, all from social media. I really believe in the mentality, attract. Don't chase. It's like fishing. You put out the right kind of bait and then all the fishes bite. Social media should be your best friend. I don't want to go too much into social media because that could be a whole class within itself. In fact, I do have a class and if you do want to check it out, you can use this code and I will give you. Check it out. I'll also link it in the description. Money management. The biggest mistake I see musicians make is they spend way more than they make. I have been there too. Let's talk about it. Before we jump into money management, I want to say you can reach your financial goals. You can have a business in the music industry. It is not just the Billie Eilishes in the world that are making money in music. This is a billion dollar industry and if you find your place and you learn these steps, you can do it. Be in the green. It's not about how much money you make but it's about how much money you spend. My first job at school was singing in the house band on cruise ships. I did it for about a year and when I got off my last contract, I had $30,000 in the bank. I was 21 or 22 years old and I said, I'm moving to New York City. I am going to be a full-time musician. I'm good. What did I do? I didn't work a normal job. I just wrote songs all day. I hired a producer. I hired photographers. I hired PR. Spent so much money on clothes. Had zero dollars in six months and that was a tough pill to swallow. What I recommend for you all is to not do that and learn how to do as many of these things as you can until you actually make money with what you're doing. This is what I call be in the green. If you can learn to take photos yourself, even if they're not as good as a professional photographer, do it. If you can learn to do the graphic designs yourself, do it. If you can learn how to produce music yourself, you should try to do it and even if it's like sounds kind of homemade and you want somebody to fine polish it, many producers will be willing to collab with you for free if you're doing some of the heavy lifting. So learn how to do these things until you start making money in your business and then you can slowly start investing in it. My second business was the New York Harmonics which was meant to go on cruise ships as guest entertainers. I spent so much money on trademarking our name, on getting an LLC, on all of these things and we never made one dollar. Why? Because our first cruise was May 2020. Don't make the mistake I did and stay in the green. There are no shortcuts. You can't pay for PR, pay for ads if you don't have a fan base yet. Build your fan base, do it DIY and then once you're making a little bit of money, you can start investing in this stuff. So now ask yourself, where can you cut costs? Can you live in a cheaper neighborhood instead of the bougie neighborhood? Can you have roommates instead of living by yourself? Do you want to live at home for a little bit so you can invest this time and money in your business? Where can you cut costs? Instead of going out to eat, maybe you'll cook. Instead of going on a trip, maybe you don't, right? Until you get into the green. Multiple streams of income. This was a game changer for me. My advice is to don't just be great at one thing but be good at a lot of things. For a long time I was just a singer and then once I started producing music that opened so many more jobs for me. From working with music tech companies, to selling vocals, to making sample packs, to being able to create content. So many things have changed for me because I was able to do music production. Instead of just being a guitar player for live music, get a dog, get a microphone, learn how to record some of your own guitar parts. Then if you can learn how to edit it, that's a new skill. And then if you can learn how to produce, there's a new skill. And then if you can learn how to mix and master, there's another skill. You can start making money in all these streams of revenue. So here are the ways that I've made money. I'm just going to talk about them a bit. As I mentioned before, singing, weddings, nursing homes, clubs, ships, casinos, selling vocals, top lines, or selling vocal arrangements. Sometimes I'll sell choir pieces, like choir arrangements for metal bands, etc. Creating music for companies, music content, submit hub. People will send to put their songs in my stories. Teaching. I love teaching. Tips by going live on social media or social media platforms paying me per views. Here are some of my work, just so you can check it out. There's me working for Splice. There's my girl group I was talking about. I was used to singing in a 90s cover band at Webster Hall, the old Webster Hall. There's me in the corner on the ship. I did some packs for BandLab. I did work for Focusrite. Singing at the wedding, Cymatics. Yeah, that's just a little bit of revenue. So now you know I'm legit. Ways you can make money, so all the ways I did, plus running sessions, mix and mastering, selling instrumentals, transcribing, writing charts, producing music, creating music playlists, DJing, booking bands, syncing music, so much more. You guys can get so creative with these. You can build instrument libraries. You can have a music podcast. You can get a gig at a restaurant and they say, I want a band every night a week. You don't want to do it every night a week, but you start booking the bands and then you take a cut of it. There are so many things that you can do and you can do these simultaneously while you're building your big business so you can have multiple streams of income. Another way that you can kind of create jobs is by creating your own opportunity. Let's say you've been really wanting to get on playlists, but nobody will accept you. So create your own playlist. Make a banging playlist and get a lot of followers on that playlist. Then you put yourself on the playlist. If you want to be in a musical and nobody will cast you, make your own musical. I really wonder if Lin Manuel would ever be casted in a musical if he didn't write it. Create your own opportunity. Think outside of the box. There's so many things you could do. I met somebody that was trying to perform in wedding bands and that kind of stuff and he's like, no, I want to get a bigger bang for my buck. So he figured out that he could perform for conferences. Conferences have a lot of money and he could charge five grand for the performance one day at the conference. I know a guy that made a nursing home business. I worked for him so I know and he would have me show up with a karaoke machine. I would sing in the different rooms in the nursing home and he would get a cut and he would also be a performer too. Think outside of the box. You can get creative with this. There's so many things that you can do. Passive income. This is really important. You get to make money in your sleep. How amazing is that? You don't have to do any work and the money comes in. Also get creative with these. Some things that typically work are sample packs, worksheets, sheet music, books, recorded classes, beat licenses. You can do something like BeatStars Arabic. Memberships. Get a thousand fans to pay five dollars a month. You can do memberships on Twitch or Patreon and selling merch. Selling merch can be good especially if you do want that you can do something like Printful and Shopify where it's print to order so you can always make some money on some of those. I like to work backwards. What are your monthly financial goals? How much money do you need to survive? Write this number down today and then know that you have to meet this number, right? So if your goal is to be an independent artist and your bills are five grand, how are you going to get to that goal? And then you have to ask yourself how much money do you need to live well? So you say okay I want to make ten thousand dollars a month. That's my goal. I need to get a thousand fans to give me ten dollars a month or I need to get two thousand fans to give me five dollars a month. That's it. Doesn't seem that crazy when you look at it that way. Taxes. The only thing certain in life is death and taxes. Let's talk about it. If you're in the US, you want to get an EIN number because you don't want to keep giving out your social security number. I'm not sure how it works in different countries. I'm sorry about that but that's how it works here. You want to make sure you save at least 30% of your income to give back to the government. If you're working for a company they might take that out for you but if you're not then you're gonna have to pay that back. You owe them money so don't overspend. Keep track of your income and expenses. Both. And once you are in the as I mentioned before, you should get a good CPA. It'll be worth it to get a good one that will help save money and time instead of trying to figure it out yourself. Okay, let's talk about credit card versus debit card. Credit card is money out. This is what you should use to spend money. However, do not overspend. Do not live in debt. I pay off my credit card in full every single month. It's good to use your credit card because you get points and you build your credit but it's bad if you're going to overspend and you don't have any discipline about that and you're going to spend more than you have and then you're going to get in big trouble and you're going to be in debt. You want to avoid debt. Keep that in mind. Debit card. Debit card or debit account. I don't use my debit card at all. Money in. My debit account is just for money in and that's just the way I like to think about it. Hot tip. Get a high yield savings account. You want your money to work for you and right now a high yield savings account has 4% interest or something like that. Instead of just leaving it in just a regular account that doesn't have any interest, you want to move it to the high yield savings account. I have been very unlucky with my investments in the stock market and crypto and any of that kind of stuff so I will not speak on that but if you are interested in that you should definitely look into it because it could be another way for you to have your money make money for you or it could lose money for you. Let's talk about sole proprietorship and LLCs. Typically you would want one of these to start your business. Talk about the differences. So a sole proprietorship has one owner. Only one owner. So if there's more than one of you, you can't do a sole proprietorship. You have to do a partnership or an LLC. It's easy to establish and to take away. It's great for starting off and then you can switch to the LLC or a corporation as your business grows. One of the biggest negatives of the sole proprietorship is that all liabilities extend from the business to the owner. So you have to ask yourself what liabilities you actually have. Would there be a chance that you'd be sued and if somebody sued you would they actually be able to win? It just depends on what your risks are. You also have to Again this is for the U.S. and you have to pay income and self-employment taxes on the net profits. A lot of people get confused with this. Gross is how much money you make. Net is income minus expenses. So you only have to make money on your net profits. This is why it's very important to keep track of your expenses so you know how much you can write off. LLC. So this is a limited liability company. Owner is not personally liable for any company lawsuits. So they can't go after you. They can only go after the company. They can't go after your personal property if you get sued. There's no double taxation but the negative about the LLC is that it costs more. Depending on your state it can cost a lot more to establish and to dismantle and you have to file an annual report. So that's why if you're not really in the green as I mentioned you wouldn't really need an LLC yet. You don't want to waste your money on something that you don't necessarily need yet. Rainy day fund. This is really important. On one of my first contracts I was walking around some Greek island with one of the piano players who was much older than me and he looked at me and he said, Sabrina no gig lasts forever. Do not stay comfortable. Your job can disappear at any moment. This is a very tumultuous industry so you want to always have six months of a rainy day fund. Six months in the bank for you to figure it out. So here are some tools that I use in my day-to-day business. If you guys have other tools that work for you please leave it in the comments. I would love to continue this conversation and maybe something you know that I don't know that could help me. So Boombox that's how I collab with others. That is the way I file share and all that. I like to use Calendly to set up appointments. Zoom is where I host my classes. I use Gmail. Kajabi is what I use at the moment to host my classes and to sell one-on-ones and to also have my website and to also use my mailing list and it's also my link in bio. Kajabi is awesome but it is $200 a month so you shouldn't use Kajabi unless you are making that money, right? You're in the green. So before Kajabi I was using Shopify. Shopify is only $30 a month so it's much more affordable and that you can have your website. The only thing about Shopify is that they don't have a mailing list in there so you have to add another one so you can use something like MailChimp and then I use Canva to do all my designs. PayPal and Stripe. I don't love PayPal but it is what it is and WhatsApp. Okay let's talk about the do's and don'ts. So let's start with the do's. Do keep learning. You are never too old or young to become an expert. So many people feel like I'm too old to learn how to play guitar. Let's say you started earlier, right? You learned how to play guitar when you were 15 and by the time you were 20 you were amazing. That only took five years. Start at 50. By 55 you could be a really good guitar player. You're never too old. You're never too young. Adapt. Life will throw you curveballs. You have to roll with the punches. Take me for example. As I mentioned before I had my girl group the New York Harmonics. I spent two years blood sweat and tears building that show. Two shows. Building two shows and all of my savings pretty much. Thousands of dollars and it didn't work out at all. So what did I do? I spent six months moping around like anyone would and then I was like pick myself up from the bootstraps. I gotta adapt. I need to figure out ways to make money in the music industry in this new landscape. So I learned how to produce and then I started selling vocals. Pretty quickly started selling vocals. So I rolled with the punches and then I adapted. And then tip number three. I found the silver lining. No I didn't go on cruise ships. I never got to bring that production to life which is really sad. But now what I do in my own studio in the comfort of my own home sometimes I make what I would have made in a whole week on a ship in one day. And I get to work by myself and I get to be creative and I get to connect with so many people. So it ended up being better. So while I was depressed and miserable when COVID was happening and all my gigs were cancelled and I was having a breakdown it was actually it was actually a breakthrough. So next time when you feel like the world is ending, your life is over, your career didn't work out the way you want to, it might actually be the best thing that happened to you in your career. Trust the universe. Trust the universe. Pay attention. Listen. Think about what people want, what people need. For a long time I was noticing that there were a lot of people selling recorded courses. But I wanted to offer live classes. I found a little opening in the market and I was like let me offer some live classes. And that's what I did and I was able to get a bunch of people in there. But it was just for me paying attention, you know? When I first started posting tips on TikTok, I didn't see there wasn't really any other logic probe tips. And so I started posting those before other people were and I was able to get a jump start because I was finding the need. Fake it till you make it. This one is important, right? Lead with confidence. As I mentioned when I was posting on TikTok in early days two years ago, I was posting logic tips and production tips and things I was just learning people. I was just learning them. So you imagine if I posted the tip like, hey I just learned this. Check it out if you want to. No, no, no. I led with confidence and I said here's a cool logic tip. So the tip, like and follow for more, right? So lead with confidence. Fake it till you make it. Trust your gut. If it feels shady, if it goes against your morals, your ethics, your goal for your company, just say no. It could be so tricky when you're like they might really be able to help me. They're really successful. I don't care who it is. I don't care if it's Drake. If it feels shady and it doesn't align with you, you should say no. Do. Do lead with confidence. If you need to make a critique, do it as a compliment sandwich. Let's say you're speaking to someone about your song. I really love what you did in this section of the song. Can you change this one bit here? And I also really liked this bit, right? So depending on who you're working with, they might be sensitive. Try a compliment sandwich. Take breaks. This is important. Last summer, I worked myself so hard that this side of my body was numb for a while and it was awful. If you don't have your health, you have nothing. Definitely take breaks and focus on your health. Make a vision board. I am big about vision boards. I have a vision board on my screensavers. I like to see it every day. You have to be able to ask the universe for what you want. Think about it. If you go into a restaurant, go into a restaurant and you say, make me whatever the chef says. And they make it for you and you might like it and you might not. But if you go in and you say, I want the chef to make me something savory and sweet with pasta and tomatoes and a little bit of eggplant with Parmesan cheese, then you're most likely going to get something that you like because you knew what you wanted. You asked the universe and you worked towards it. So vision boards are key in my experience. Now, you can't just wish on a star and hope that it's going to happen for you. You still have to put in the work, but at least you know where you're going. You kind of have a map of where you're going. Celebrate your wins. We talked about that before, but this is important. Congratulate yourself. Pat yourself on the back. Don'ts. Let's talk about the don'ts. Don't be afraid to say no. I'm going to talk about a little technique on how to say no a little bit later, but it is the most important word in the music industry. No, don't get attached to one idea. If it's not working, you're trying, trying, trying, trying, and it's still not working. Take a B and try something different. And if you still believe in it, you can come back to it. Don't feel sorry for yourself. Honestly, I do this all the time still, and I hate it because you're wasting time and energy feeling sorry for yourself. The world doesn't owe you anything. You have to be strong. You are stronger than you think you are. This is also for me. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Don't attach to negative people. I really believe in the proximity effect, and it's not just negative people. People that don't inspire you. I used to always say, I want to be the worst singer in the room because what is being the best singer in the room going to do for me, really? If I'm the best, I'm the best. Everyone says I'm the best. Cool. That's great. But if I'm the worst singer in the room, I can learn from the other singers. We as singers are subconsciously mimicking, right? I can listen to them. I can listen to their phrasing. I can listen to the way they deliver, and I can subconsciously copy like an artist, and I will grow, and I'll be better off. I want to surround myself with people that are better at their music business than I am, better producers than I am. That's the proximity effect. Next, don't be afraid to let people see you trying. So many people are like, I don't want to do it because I'm afraid I'm going to fail, or I don't want to post on social media because it's going to be embarrassing, and people are going to make fun of me. Don't be afraid to let people see you trying. You're out there trying to do something. While they're not, there's going to be haters no matter what. I promise you, no matter what you do, people are going to talk bad about you, and you got to ignore them anyways. Don't be afraid to let people see you trying. Don't compare yourself to others. Everyone is on their own path. This is hard. If you start getting the habit of comparing yourself to others, you're going to do that on every level you get to. Maybe in the beginning, you're going to start comparing yourself to other bandmates. Then you're going to get to being a band leader. You're going to start comparing yourself to other band leaders. Try not to do that. It's going to be the death of you. Don't give up. This is a marathon. This is not a sprint. This is not a linear situation. You're not going to get to point A, and then point B, point C. You're going to get to point C, and then get back to point A, and then get back to D, and then go up and down, and up and down, and you just can't give up. You're in this for the long run. Don't be afraid to admit you were wrong. Always try your best, and if you're wrong about something, so what? Just say, I was wrong. You're right. I'm my bad. I messed up. I'm learning. I'm growing. I'm a human. It's all good. Don't live in the past. I used to do this a lot, and I try really not to. Oh, what if I listened to my mom and practiced piano every day? I'd be a really good piano player, and I'd be able to tour the world singing and playing piano. Don't do that. You didn't do it then. It's all good. If I really want to be a piano player, I can start now. Now is what you got, so work with it, and don't live in the past. Don't assume rejection, right? Don't say, I'm not going to go to the audition because there's no way they're going to pick me. They might pick you. They might pick you, and the only way they're going to pick you is if you go, so don't assume rejection, and lastly, don't lead with envy. It's so easy to be jealous of people or to say things like, they're only successful because they're really good at marketing, or they're only successful because they're skinny and blonde and yada, yada, yada. No, no, no, no. Recognize that jealousy. It's okay to feel jealousy. It's a natural human feeling. Then take a minute and learn from it. Why am I jealous of this person? I'm jealous of this person because they're doing this thing, and they're doing it well. What are they doing well? What are they doing about it? Trust me, it's never just about beauty. Confidence is beautiful. Is it because they're really confident? Okay, I got to work on that. Is it because they are really good at marketing? Okay, let me work on some of my marketing. Is it because they learned how to produce, and I'm just singing? Okay, let me do that. Instead of leading with envy and being jealous, you're actually flipping it and learning from that jealousy, and you're saying, okay, these are the things I want to change. How to say no. Let's quickly talk about this. I've made a video on this from my TikTok and Instagram, but as a musician, we have so much PTSD from not having a gig or fear of not getting work or fear of being broke again. I always want to say yes, and I remember when I graduated from college, somebody said, say yes to everything. For a long time, I did. I would get called for a gig while I was at a friend's party, and it was in two hours, and I would say, got to go. I got to go to this gig. But then I learned, don't say no to the gig, but say no to the budget. So now, next time somebody asks me, hey, Sabrina, can you sing a gig? And I know I really don't want to do it, but I'm so afraid to say no. I say, okay, what's the budget? And they say, oh, it's 100 bucks for the gig. And I say, no, no, no, I'm only doing gigs right now that are $500. And most likely, they'll say no, but we'll keep you in mind. Great. You didn't say no to the gig, and now they keep you in mind. Let's say, okay, yeah, I'll give you the 500 bucks. Well, I guess you're doing the gig that you don't want to do, but at least you're making five times as much. That's how I say no. The last thing I want to talk about is the most important thing to talk about, which is your mindset. Mindset is 90% of success. So the successful people in this world, what they have is not necessarily more talent than you. What they have is audacity. They take bold risks. They have confidence. They have unwavering determination and absolute belief that it will happen with hard work and perseverance. That is more than half the battle. I promise you. We're going to talk about all these points. First, remove fear and doubt. Fear and doubt has always been the greatest enemy of human potential. You have to believe and truly believe you deserve a seat at the table. If you don't believe in yourself, nobody else will. You are more capable than you think you are. Use mantras. I am good enough. I am talented enough. I do put in the work. I will show up every day. Look at fear in a different way. Instead of saying, I'm afraid. If I don't make it, I'll be broke. Tell yourself, I am hardworking. I have so many talents. There are so many ways that I'll find a job. One of my favorite authors, which I've learned a lot of this mindset stuff from is Roxy. I don't want to say her name wrong, but Roxy, she wrote a book, Seven Tips to Manifestation. She says, we manifest what we are worthy of. We manifest what we are worthy of. So if we put on our vision board all this stuff, but then we tell ourselves, there's no way I can be a millionaire. There's no way I'll have time to travel. There's no way I'm going to do this. None of those things are going to come true. You have to truly believe that they will. Let's talk about failure. Failure is a part of success. You have to fail in order to succeed. I really believe that. If you never try something new, you never would have failed. And if you never try anything new, you would never succeed. I fail all the time. I fail all the time. Sometimes I'll post a new video, a new concept, and it'll bomb. Sometimes I'll post a new concept and it will take off. And it's only because I tried something new and I gave myself the opportunity to potentially fail. In every failure, there's an invaluable lesson. It can be painful. So sit down and have those tough conversations. What didn't work out with this client? Why did this end so badly? What could I have done differently? And let go of the ego and let go of your pride and just sit down and learn from it. And then lastly, when you do fail, because it's inevitable that you will fail at some point, take the L, get back up, and try again. The people that aren't successful are the people that don't try again. They're not the people that had the least amount of failures because they probably had more failures because they kept getting up and they kept trying again. The reason why I keep getting up again is to remember the why. Why am I doing this in the first place? Why didn't I just become a veterinarian? Why didn't I just become a plastic surgeon? Because I love music. Music chose me. I always wanted to be in the music industry. I always wanted to be creative and this is why I won't give up. Hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard. We can talk about this all day. I've known people at Berkeley that showed up to class and they were the worst person in class, but then they practiced every single day. They practiced much harder than anyone else that just showed up and was good already, and then they ended up being better than the rest of us because hard work will beat talent. That's my opinion. You can fight it out in the comments if you want to. The last thing I'm going to leave you with is to enjoy the process. I want to tell you a little story that doesn't really have anything to do with music, but I was working one of my side hustles in New York City. I was catering. One of my shifts at the U.S. Open, the legendary Billie Jean King, was speaking on a What did it feel like to win the 1973 tennis match against Bobby Riggs? For those of you that don't know, it was a big tennis match in the 70s where it was like the first one against women versus men and is women better at tennis than men, etc., etc., and then obviously she won. Girl power! Billie said so definitively, I will always remember this. She said it was a relief to win and that for me was like, what? You did all this work just for a relief? The same kind of relief it is when you make the bus or, you know, get to class on time? And then she further explained and she said something along the lines of you have to enjoy the process. You can't just be in it just to win. This changes everything. So many of us are rushing to the finish line, trying to see the finished product. You can't actually enjoy those long rehearsals and get excited for the new business challenges and the new little challenges that come along the way and celebrate those little wins because when we get to the finish line, it might not feel as triumphant as you think it will be. You might just be like, I did it. Don't miss out on the now and enjoy the process. It is such an exciting time to learn and grow. I really hope you learned something new from this. Thank you so much if you made it to the end to watch all this information. Please comment below what you liked, what you didn't like. It's okay. I'm a big girl. I can take it. Please apply this to your own businesses. Tag me if something works or something works for you in the future. I'd love to stay in touch. I'll link all the important stuff in the captions too. I'm trying to make more videos. So if there's anything you'd like to see or a video you'd like me to make, put it in the comments and one will be coming out soon. I'm Sides. Have a great day.